Date:
Wednesday, July 12, 2006
Author:
Kyle Bennett
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Intel Core 2 Duo & Extreme Power Consumption

Are you wondering if Intel’s new Core 2 Duo and Extreme are raging infernos like their predecessors? We show you what kind of wattage you can expect to draw so you know what PSU is in your future. And we throw in AMD's Energy Efficient 3800+ as well.

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Conclusions

There is no doubt that Intel deserves huge kudos as they have brought the power consumption of their flagship processors well under AMD's as we saw in our 50% and 100% load tests. Not only will this bode well for those of you contemplating the possible need for a new PSU with your next upgrade, but you will not see the terrible heat concerns associated with the last generation of Pentium 4s either. In fact, as suggested by the wattage consumption graphs seen previously, we saw very cool CPU temperatures being read by our systems.

AMD's Athlon 64 architecture still shines though as it is hard to fault even the FX-62 processor’s consumption. If the low wattage 3800+ numbers are any sign of power savings we might see in AMD processor scaling soon, this is incredibly promising. We have a low wattage 4200+ here as well now that we are using in our testing.

The Bottom Line

Intel has fixed their broken power consumption legacy and the Core 2 now fits inside a power envelope that will give it a very competitive performance per watt position. At the same time, however, I would highly suggest keeping your eyes on AMD’s low wattage / energy efficient processors for those projects that require a noiseless solution.

Discussion

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